I am a Managing Partner at Brookside Strategies, LLC, an energy and utility management consulting firm based in Darien, Connecticut. I've spilled blood, sweat and tears grappling with the full spectrum of barriers and misconceptions about distributed generation and energy-efficiency technologies. Previously, I practiced law in New York City at Paul Weiss Rifkind Garrison & Wharton, LLP and Jenner & Block, LLP. I also attended journalism school at Columbia University and earned a JD at Stanford Law School. I've written about energy and environmental issues for Forbes, The Nation, Mother Jones and several other publications. I am the Chair of the Northeast Clean Heat and Power Initiative. Drop me a line - or two - at wmp@cleanbeta.com.

Shale gas has largely undercut the case for scaling up investments in renewable energy – at least in the near-term. In my view, this was the only meaningful claim that 60 Minutes made about cleantech.

Like a growing number of people, I tend to agree with 60 Minutes. So does BrightSource Energy, which cited low natural gas prices when it pulled its IPO in 2012.

Indeed, natural gas prices were so low in 2012 that it displaced coal as the fuel of choice for electric power generators and pushed U.S. carbon emissions to their lowest level since 1994, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

The segment did not say that the federal stimulus investment in cleantech was a complete failure.

“The stimulus investment wasn’t a total bust,” said Lesley Stahl. “It helped create the successful electric car company, Tesla. A few other companies are starting to show promise and loans are being repaid.”

The industry’s knee-jerk response to 60 Minutes is more troubling to me than anything said in the segment.

Does the cleantech industry appreciate how significantly shale gas has altered the energy landscape?

If Vinod Khosla’s response to 60 Minutes is any indication, it does not.

“At scale, new technologies must compete with conventional fossil fuels on both price and performance – in the U.S., as well as in India and China,” said Khosla, in an open letter sent to 60 Minutes.

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The response is predictable since those involved in the Cleantech industry must know that their product has no intrinsic value. The value of wind and solar energy is derived from laws and regulations which mandate its use and give it top priority on the electric power grid.

In Vinod Khosla’s letter he states “The future will run on energy.” Clearly he fails to understand the difference between energy and power. The future will run on power, not energy. The energy of the Colorado river has no value without the Hoover dam that can store that energy into a power source that can be released as needed.

In the absence of grid scale storage, wind and solar are as powerless as the river before the dam was built.

I seem to remember Solar being a fantasy, flying a fantasy, going to the moon, a fantasy.

Using cave-man technology of buring crap and poisoning the PEOPLE of the planet more and more just to cook and make heat and light = we have to SWITCH off Cave-man Technology.

Renewables is the ONLY logical way to do it. It FIXES MOST of our problems, including POISONING the planet(skyrocketing healthcare costs), polluting our waters so much, and depleting our forests. Solar on private HOMES creates more monthly disposable incomes = JOBS. Solar on Government buildings = lower taxes and MORE needed services = jobs. Plus- Renewables means MORE NEW INDUSTRY JOBS, and the RISING energy rates WON’T be applied to YOU or the government! = lower and lower expected energy bills and higher and higher Return on Investment!

More investments in Renewables = lower and lower prices, as Solar has already dropped by 50%.

Sure, we can FANTASIZE over the reserves of crap in the ground that keeps getting more and more expensive to extract, transport, and burn, but then we have that “inconvenient truth”, it POISONS EVERYONE and everything.

That “Free-Market Cap and Trade”, was really the Conservatives way of renaming POISON and PAY.

Solar Panels are winning, and Hollywood doesn’t like it. People foolishly view 60 Minutes as some kind of “alternative”, they’re not, they’re just another weapon in Los Angeles ShowBusiness’ arsenal to prosecute the will of the ShowBusiness elite. When you finally realize that Los Angeles rules America using propaganda tools like 60 Minutes, you start to realize why progress is so slow these days. L.A. wants to freeze time to 1980, when the actor Ronald Reagan was inaugurated.

If ANYONE remembered Nat gas prices, they dropped as electricity rates skyrocketed in the 70′s and 80′s leading to everyone switching to gas appliances. Then gas prices skyrocketed…

Then ALL prices skyrocketed. If you want to know WHY prices are HIGH in the US, remember the crash of ’08! Market “speculators” ran for the hills… and Gasoline prices dropped from $4.50 in Ca to around $2.00/gal. Yeah, we’re being RIPPED OFF that badly.

ANY author that tries to argue UNLIMITED renewable FREE energy as MORE expensive than FINITE reserves of Caveman Technology “today” (burning crap and poisoning the world, to cook and make heat and light), is ILLOGICAL in it’s very base assumptions.

Renewables are the ONLY way to beat the rising prices of Cave Man Technology owned bv corporations, of burning crap(poisoning the world, raising healthcare costs=killing jobs) to cook, and make light and heat.

Rising prices of energy are predicted just in the SF Bay Area, to be 6% per year. If you get to Net Zero, your expected monthly billing will be ZERO per year…. for 20-25 years. 6% of nothing = Nothing! 6% of higher and higher rates = better and better investment!

Newer and newer technologies and competition will lower the prices of maintaining renewables.

Yeah, sure the monopolistic energy co’s here are whining and getting OTHER charges, but they will be taken to court and shown to be FRIVOLOUS charges. If I put more solar than I use, my next door neighbors will use it, right? Why should I have to incur a FEE for them to redistribute it 10 feet, when they BUY it cheaper from me than they buy electricity form other providers. Those laws won’t stand legal scrutiny. Just as Pentland’s Comment doesn’t withstand factual and logical scrutiny.